Recent project

[beacon14]

Not wanting to hijack the thread about table surfacing, here's a few pics of a dining table I had the pleasure of machining recently. Unfortunately the customer wanted a brown stain, so the finished photo leaves a lot to be desired, but the table top is 40" x 102" x 1.75" thick, and was machined from a 58" (!) x 120" x 2" slab of Bubinga. The "inlays" are 3/4" steel and are bolted through the wood and a 1/4" steel sub top.


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[mikejohn]

David
Brown stain or not, I like it a lot!

..............Mike

[rustnrot]

How dimensionally stable is this wood as the humidity and temperature change? .... And I gotta ask how heavy is it?

[beacon14]

I suspect the Bubinga is as stable as wood gets, i.e. you'd better allow for wood movement or you'll end up with firewood. The steel butterflies anchor the center edges of the two table halves securely to the steel subtop...the outer edges are secured with 1/4" lags through 1" slots using nylon washers, and only gently snugged up - enough to be able to lift the table by picking up the corners of the top, but still allow the outer edges to move up to 3/8" in either direction. And the two halves were finished all the way around including the undersides before the table was assembled.

It's heavy - two people could barely lift it. The steel base weighs as much or more than the top.

[bleeth]

FYI- There is an article about large bubinga slabs in this months Woodshop News.
For those who use; it note that the color tends to lighten and yellow even with a UV protectant finish under direct sun (as in constantly through a window).

Dave

[bleeth]

By the way: Beautiful job Dave.

[joe]

David,

My complements on such beautiful work.

How hard was it to make the keys and did you have to manually charpen the round corners left behind in the table?

Joe

[srwtlc]

Nice work Dave!

Due to the fact that you have a riftsawn slab, expansion and contraction and the tendency to warp will be minimal. Finishing all sides also slows down the intake and expelling of moisture which balances the wood.

Stain on Bubinga, that's just wrong. No offense to you Dave.

What's the trestle made from (looks like Walnut)?

Keep up the good work.

Scott

[gerald_d]

Could we please have a moment of silence for that Bubinga tree that grew to 58" in diameter, and then had to end up wearing stain. It is an endangered African tree (African Rosewood).

These are the jobs for which one wants a very solid table.

[beacon14]

Yes, I know about the stain, but that was not my choice. I felt honored to be able to work with this piece of God's Earth and enjoy its natural beauty before it got painted and shipped off to L.A. to grace some celebrity's mansion. And I did struggle some with the ethical issues of using such precious resources, but in the end I decided that the issue was bigger than me, the trees are being cut and used regardless of my inconspicous little life, I do what I can to conserve resources (working out of my home, for one thing), but in the end I'm just making a living and someone was going to use that slab for something, at least I could try to make something lasting and useful out of it. It is my hope that some future owner with better taste (or at least a more appealing color scheme) will sand that table down and make something else useful and lasting with it.

The steel work was done by a metal worker. I probed each dovetail (they were each "unique"), offset the resulting vectors in DesignCad, then imported into PartWizard for the toolpaths. I used a 1/8" bit to Profile the opening and used Area Clear to clean out the pocket with a 1/4" bit, and since the corners of the steel were ground back except at the very tip, I only had a tad of hand chiseling to do in each corner.

I haven't been so nervous cutting a piece of wood in a long time, but I don't work on too many pieces that would take two month's mortage payments to replace (not to mention 300 or so years of slow growth). I did a lot of testing in scrap pieces, and in the end it was pretty easy to do the actual machining. I ended up leaving around .01 clearance so the butterflies could be placed and removed easily without having to be pounded in, and I relieved the sides of the butterflies for ease of insertion and to ensure a tight fit at the top where it matters (an old trim carpenter's trick).

The trestle is bubinga (from the same slab), you can't tell from the photo. The part between the panel ends is wrapped around a 2x2 square steel tube, the "ends" that stick out past the panels are just stuck on there to complete the illusion of a trestle. Another detail not readily visible from the photo is the steel trough let into the center of the top - for flower vases I guess.

Thanks for the compliments
David B.

Butterflies hot glued to table for probing, outline being cut:

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Test fitting - almost there:

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